1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for generating and detecting confusing phones. In particular, the present invention relates to a method and system of generating and detecting Mandarin confusing phones.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, as both computer speed and speech technologies advance rapidly, applications related to speech processing for our daily life uses have also increased substantially. One promising direction is computer-assisted spoken language learning for non-native speakers.
Language learning can be roughly divided into four parts: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. For the speaking part, currently there is no efficient learning tools that can provide Mandarin learners with both automatic evaluation and high-level feedbacks. The pronunciation training tools available on the market simply partition and analyze a given Mandarin utterance to give a score, without giving possible confusing phones for a phone that is mispronounced. Moreover, these tools are unable to provide effective feedbacks/suggestions considering the users' nationalities and language backgrounds. As a result, the actual assistance from the tools for the users is limited.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need to solve the stated problem by a method and system of generating and detecting confusing phones/syllables automatically.